Deck the Stalls 2011!!!

Saturday was "Deck the Stall Day" at Circle K! It was a fun-filled afternoon of putting swags together, coffee drinking, eating, and visiting!

Here's the swag-making crew! Great job ladies! We made swags for all the stall doors, some extras for us to bring home, and we sent home some more with a few other boarders! (Thanks Autum and Tylor for all the boughs!)

making the swags...

and hanging them up!


Murphy likes his swag!

the goods!

and enjoying the goods!

Sweet baby Konnor even joined in the fun!


Marsha was also able to ride Gypsy for the first time on Saturday! That was an added bonus to "deck the stalls" day! They both did great!

Thanks so much to all of our lovely boarders who came out for "Deck the stalls!" We love our Circle K boarders (horses and people alike!) :)

Coming up: Deck the Stalls Day!

It’s Our 2nd Annual Deck the Stalls Day!

Come and make a swag for your horse’s stall door and make one for your door at home too if you‘d like!


Enjoy hot lattes and spiced cider and great visiting, of course!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

The “decorating doors” open at 1 PM and close at 4 PM

*We’ll have evergreen boughs and some ribbon. If you have special ribbon you’d like to use, bring it along!

Summer on the Ranch

We've been enjoying summer. Doing a few projects around the ranch, picking and eating berries, camping, riding horse, playing outside constantly... that's what our family's been up to!

Summer inside the barn. I love how light and bright it is in the barn during the summer.

My sis took the pics in this post and I had to include this one. Here's one of our circle K horses. Beautiful, don't you think!?!


This spring we fixed up the outdoor arena, and added some trail obstacles. It's been fun to have this course in use over the summer! Our boarded horses have been using it quite a bit and Brian's really enjoyed it for his training horses too.
It includes a bridge, logs, tire course, poles, and a brush simulator.

Of course, our little ranchers enjoy doing the course too! :)


One of the things that says summer to us is hay. Time to buy our hay for the year. Brian loves this time of year. I think it makes him feel like a real man throwing all that hay around in the loft. (good thing too, b/c bucking bales isn't really my most favorite ranch project to help out with - I'll gladly leave that to him and our hay peeps!)

Oh, the thought that goes into hay buying. You can see that even lil Miss is deep in thought over this...


Our loft is brimming with sweet smelling hay; a start to being ready for winter. Now, the project at the top of the list: redoing the tops of the fields, giving them a new layer of sand, ready to drain off the mass amounts of rainwater that the Pacific Northwest provides all winter long! (Could you please last a while longer, summer!?!)

Meet Manly

Here's Manly, the newest member of the Kooiker family. Brian's pretty thrilled about him, and happy to have a horse of his own again. (It's been a couple years.)
Manly is a two year old, Solid Bred Paint. He's bred to be a halter/western pleasure show horse. He's been shown in halter and lunge line. He has some growing to do, so he's just going to be our buddy for at least a year, until he fills out a little and Brian can start riding him. He's 15 and 1 hands and should get fairly big, because his sire is 16 and 1 hands.


Manly was getting a bit excited over the goat. The goat was inside the round pen chowing down on some grass and dandelions, and Manly couldn't see him, but could hear him. We're pretty sure this was his first goat encounter. We're happy to say, they came out friends.

"Please don't make me go in there with that foreign creature!"


"Hmmmm, doesn't seem so bad."

"Oh hey, maybe we can be friends."



Sydni was pretty excited for Manly to be ours. And Kolt's already been on his back, with a huge smile. :)

Ms. Sydni...

has been riding "all over the countryside" - direct quote from the little gal herself! She's excited that Daddy has been training such a sweet filly these past couple months, so that she's been able to go riding lately! She loves to ride and is extremely comfortable up there. (Her mama's comfortable this time too since this filly stands so calmly and is levelheaded.) :)
Sydni thinks riding in the arena is OK, but now that she's been out on the trails and river bar more, she's decided that trail riding is where it's at! Her little brother rode in front of her yesterday for a bit. (bummer I didn't get a picture of that; it was SO cute) She held on tight, and both of their smiles were huge!

Sand & Circle K Horse Treats

Well, we're happy to say that our paddocks attached to our stalls are fully converted to SAND! Now we, and the Circle K horse, can do a happy dance!!!

Hog fuel, you had to go. You had a tendency to get mushy, muddy, and yucky. You acted fine in the summer, but when the rains came you just didn't cut it. Being that the Pacific NW's rainy season is L O N G, we needed to replace you.

Sand, we do love your draining power! You are just what we needed! It puts a smile on our faces to see you soaking up water and not caking horse hooves!

It's sand as far as the eye can see... :)


Today, being the special day that it is, I mixed up some "love treats" for all the horses!
Then I attached notes to each of them, and brought them out to the barn...

...here's how they turned out

...and I put them on each horse's stall door! Happy Valentines Day to all you lovely Circle K horses!


Here's the recipe for my horse treats in case you'd like to whip some up!

Circle K Horse Treats

Mix together:
1 c. oats
1 c. flour
1 c. grain
1 t. salt
2 t. oil
and enough molasses to make them stick together in balls (about 1/4 - 1/2 c.)
Shape into small balls, place on cookie sheet.
Bake @ 350 degrees for 15 min.
Serve with love!